A Study On The Relationship Between Non-English Majors’ Learning Styles And Their Reading Performance

With the exchange between people from different countries becomes more and more frequent, English, as an international language, has been more and more important in people’s study, work and life. The ability of English reading, as one of the standards of people’s English level, draws people’s attention all the time. It’s also a necessary part in various English tests. But the teaching of English reading is always about the general reading skills and strategies instead of some specific and effective suggestions. Kolb’s theory of learning styles has drawn a lot of attention abroad and at home, but in the field of second language acquisition, the Chinese study on it is rare. In this study, the college students’ learning styles and learning modes will be investigated based on Kolb’s learning theories and the relationship between students’ learning styles, learning modes and their reading performance will be explored to find the possible individual factors that can influence students’ reading performance.In the study, 172 sophomores from two general universities in Hebei province are chosen as the subjects. The researcher used Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory and the reading passages in CET-4 to test the subjects’ learning styles and their reading performance. The data of the survey is input to the software SPSS13.0. After the analyses of the data, the researcher get:(1) the dominant learning styles of the college students are diverging and assimilating; the science students prefer the assimilating style, while the art students prefer the diverging style; the male students prefer the assimilating style, while the female students prefer the diverging style.(2) Taking the students as a whole, the students prefer the RO mode in the information-processing dimension and the CE mode in the perception dimension; the science students prefer the RO mode and the AC mode, while the art students prefer the RO mode and the CE mode; the male students prefer the RO mode and the AC mode, while the female students prefer the RO mode and the CE mode.(3) For the whole students with different learning styles, the difference of their performance on the detail questions is significant. Students with the diverging style do better on the detail questions than the students with the converging style. For the science students with different learning styles, the difference of their performance on the detail questions is also significant. Students with the diverging style do better on the detail questions than the students with the converging style and the assimilating style. For the art students with different learning styles, there is no significant difference on their reading performance.(4) Taking the students as a whole, there is a positive correlation between the CE mode and students’ performance on the detail questions. That is to say, the better the students do on the CE mode the higher performance they will get on the detail questions. There is a negative correlation between the AC mode and students’ reading performance on the detail questions. That is to say, the better they do on the AC mode the lower performance they will get on the detail questions. There is a negative correlation between the AC mode and the students’ performance on the whole questions, which means that the better the students do on the AC mode, the lower performance they will get on the English reading. For the science students, the situation is the same with the whole students. Among the art students, there is no correlation between students’ learning modes and their reading performance.From the above findings, we can get that there is difference between students’ learning styles and between students’ learning modes. Therefore, teachers of English reading should: try to make their teaching style match the students’ learning style in teaching English reading, so they can improve their teaching efficiency; train their students with some learning strategies to make up for students’ shortcomings on learning styles, in order to meet the needs of different learning styles in learning; make the students know about their own learning styles and some related theories, so they can develop their autonomic learning in reading and improve their learning by themselves. What’s more, since the diverging style and the CE mode benefit the students in solving the detail questions, teachers should teach some learning strategies and reading skills related to the students in order to help them to answer the detail questions in reading comprehension and improve their reading performance.